"We have lost a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a dear friend, a patriot and a happy warrior," reads the statement. "Andrew lived boldly, so that we more timid souls would dare to live freely and fully, and fight for the fragile liberty he showed us how to love."

Virtually unknown outside the media business until a few years ago, Breitbart abandoned an unremarkable career in entertainment to learn the tricks of political news blogging as an assistant to Matt Drudge. He helped Huffington launch her site in 2005, then decided there was nothing to stop him from going into business for himself.

Breitbart didn't stop at covering politics; he sought to have an impact on them. He did that in a big way, albeit a somewhat ephemeral one, when, in 2010, he posted a video of U.S. Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod, an African-American woman, that appeared to show her confessing to discriminating against white farmers. Sherrod was quickly forced to resign, though she was offered her job back after it was revealed that the video had been edited to distort the meaning of her remarks. Sherrod later sued Breitbart over the episode, which elevated him to a national figure and made him a more or less constant presence on 24-hour cable news shows.

He was also instrumental in launching the career of James O'Keefe, a guerilla conservative activist who used undercover video stunts in attempts to discredit institutions including NPR and ACORN.